Elisenda Solsona’s ‘thriller’ about fertility

Women who have never wanted to be mothers can hardly understand the – often sick – desire of others to be one. We find it very strange that a woman would want to bring another human being into this miserable world and let the responsibility weigh on her for the rest of her days. But the desire for motherhood is evidence, and a good example of this fact is, unfortunately, wombs for rent, this barbarity raised to the umpteenth power is convincing proof of the validity of a patriarchy that despises women and uses them for their illicit purposes.

Mammaliathe first novel by Elisenda Solsona (Olesa de Montserrat, 1984), who had already published short stories and micro-stories, talks about motherhood as longing and maternal filial bonds. Mammalia is one thriller in which a mystery hovers until the denouement. The protagonist, Cora, is obsessively searching for her past. “The only thing I knew was what I explained to you, that my father had adopted me when I was about to turn three years old and that my biological mother had died at the time of childbirth.” Hint: her father’s profession, a gynecologist, takes center stage here.

We are in a dystopian, indeterminate time. Climate change – we assume – has caused the reactivation of volcanoes and ash rain. A Fertilization Plan has been implemented to perpetuate the species and condemns young women to donate their eggs to be implanted in healthy and strong wombs, which guarantee their viability. Cora suffers from heart disease. Can she be a mother, if she wants to? Cora’s heart disease is also a decisive factor. Has his illness doomed him or saved him from a tragic fate?

Play with the alternation of tenses

The author is skillfully dosing us with information, playing with the alternation of tenses. We start in a town in Northern Catalonia, where an eight-year-old Cora spends a few days of summer in the company of her father and his partner, Sara, who is fond of caving. It looks like a random town on Tripadvisor, but it’s not. In that French town, Rià, there is something strange: a forest, some caves, some female voices. We follow the plot as if it were a mystery novel where you want to find out an identity. We are looking for Cora’s identity, her origin.

In the company of Joana, the friend-partner who has the answer to her doubts tattooed on her, Cora persists in the search for an explanation which, on page 300, takes a surprising turn and leads into a fantasy that shatters plausibility of the novel Some will believe that surprise elevates the story. I was not convinced, I find the outcome a little too bold. A master of intrigue, Patricia Highsmith, diagnosed a Suspense one of the mistakes in the writing of a plot: “The writer has not laid the foundations for what should happen when the story is more advanced”. Nevertheless, Solsona’s imagination is fertile, and the ability to construct a non-linear novel, as well as the creation of injured or directly shipwrecked characters, is commendable.